Wireless connectivity is a feature of the modern telecommunications environment. An increasing range of people are using a wide variety of wireless data networks to access corporate data applications.
However, there are numerous competing mobile devices that can be used to achieve this. Each device has its own operating system and its own display characteristics. Operating systems are not mutually compatible, nor are the display characteristics—some are color, some are black and white, some are text-only, some are pictorial.
At the same time, an increasing number of mobile device users are people without a technical background or high level of educational achievement. Such people are often intimidated by the need to run complex installation programs. Furthermore, at present, such installation programs generally depend on cable connections to a personal computer by the means of a ‘cradle’ or other such device.
U.S. Patent Publication No. US 2003/0060896 discloses a mechanism allowing server-side applications to be presented at multiple wireless devices with minimal modification of the application at the server. As disclosed, how an application is presented at a mobile device is defined by a text based application definition file. The definition file describes how an application is to be presented at the mobile device; the format of transactions over the wireless network; and a format of data related to the application to be stored at the mobile device. A virtual machine software component at the mobile device interprets the definition file and presents an interface to the application in accordance with the definition file. Conveniently, the application definition file may be independent of the particular type of mobile device, while virtual machine software components specific to the mobile device may be created.
This approach, while flexible in many ways, is somewhat limited. For example, how an application may be presented at the mobile device, and what resources of the mobile device may be used is limited by the nature of the virtual machine software at the device. The virtual machine software component is typically written with a specific mobile device with specific hardware in mind. As the mobile device is expanded to, for example, include new hardware or local software applications the server side application can typically not take advantages of the new hardware and software. Of course, the virtual machine software component could be rewritten (or recompiled). This, however, is cumbersome and would require many versions of virtual machine software specific to many different hardware configurations.
Accordingly, there is a need for virtual machine software that is extensible.